5 Ways to improve New Business cold calls

1) Master your first 15 seconds.

It’s all about tone, and strong tone comes from confidence. Don’t read a script; find a sweet spot somewhere between how you would talk naturally to a friend and something with a more purposeful edge. You don’t want to sound SO natural that you don’t sound like you care or mean business, but you also don’t want to trigger a negative and defensive “SALES CALL ALERT!” response.

2) Smile when you talk.

Yeah, sounds silly, but - again - it’s all about tone, and if you sound bright and engaging, people will come along with you. Lift your head up (stand up if you need to as you call) and approach the 50th call of the day with the same energy as the first.

3) Research (but JUST enough).

You don’t want to spend ten minutes researching a call, only to hit a dead number or a voicemail. You do, however, need to know who you’re calling and why, so do JUST enough research to (when they finally answer) name-drop a client they’ve served or reference a piece of work they’ve been involved in.

4) Open your list and get your head down.

Blitz it. Don’t trudge through your list. Know who you are going to hit and get on with it. No other tasks should be addressed while you’re in calling mode. Turn off emails. Turn off Skype. It’s unlikely something SO URGENT is going to happen in the next hour that you can’t dedicate yourself to the task at hand. Which brings us to…

5) Set a target (and reward yourself with a tiny treat at the end)

Cold calling is brutal. Select your next 30 targets, get to the task, and then reward yourself with something. A coffee. A 5 min ‘staring out the window’ break. Just something to help you mentally stick to the task until it’s complete. Don’t find an excuse to walk away mid-task.

Good luck out there.

New business: narcissism and SEO

To my mind there are two reasons to blog: narcissism and SEO.

As I scroll back through the tens of blog posts I’ve authored, I’m not wondering how many people have read it (I know it’s just you, mum) no, all I’m hoping is that all this unique content has bumped us up the SEO ranks. The sad truth is I write for Google. I am Google’s bitch. It is what it is.

The really galling part is that I actually take a bit of trouble over these posts. I make long lists of subjects on which I think I have something to say, and then I’ll write, re-write, edit, abandon, revisit, fine-tune, etc etc, before finally posting. I CARE. No, really. I actually do. It’s heart-breaking.

So make sure that you don’t kid yourself. It doesn’t matter to Google what you’re writing, just that you ARE writing and that it’s unique content. No one is going to use the sentence “Five Danish otters saunter through the blazing heat of Dame Jennifer Gimlet’s tree-themed fountain park” today, so I win. Go on Google. Bump me up why don’t ya - that sentence alone has got to be worth two spots up the table!

If, however, you genuinely think you’re a guru, then fill your boots. Poop your knowledge all over Google. Smear it up the face of LinkedIn. All your peers will no doubt ‘like’ your post regardless of what you say, and if they’ve got one hand free might even comment with incredibly thoughtful replies such as “nice one Dean - you’re not wrong” and “Dean, you are my God” so you will immediately be validated by people just as useless as you are.

Words, words and - dare I venture - more words.

If we’re talking about the opening paragraph on your home page then it matters. A LOT.

If, however, you’re just blogging into the void, safe in the knowledge that only the person who commissioned you to write it is reading it (morning Steve) then just get the job done. Write something you won’t be embarrassed by, but don’t spend too long on it. Google is a fickle mistress; she’ll notice you (as someone might notice a small spider on a coffin) make whatever adjustments are required to acknowledge your meagre effort, and then be done with you, discarding you like an empty Snickers bar wrapper or an exercise bike that’s become a clothes horse for the last nine years (another excellent unique sentence I think you’ll agree).

Cat. Pound coin. John Menzies. Paralegal. Barry Norman. Finger. Regina Phalange.

Do enjoy your garden.

New Business and math(s)

Professor Albert Mehrabian tells us that communication is 7% words, 38% tone/voice and 55% body language. So, on the phone, we’re kinda screwed before we’ve even started simply because we’re missing more than half of Bertie’s equation (yes, he lets me call him ‘Bertie’ and no, I don’t know him at all).

So, from a pure maths perspective, the 7% and 38% now have to add up to 100% of what we’ve got to play with, so we’re a solid 55% short (MATHS). The good news is that in the new body-language-less 100% world we find ourselves, tone is now worth at least 76% with words coming in at a pathetic 14% (yeah, I know that doesn’t entirely add up but I couldn’t be bothered to work it out fully, and neither should you - NOT MATHS)..

What does become clear (and you’ll know this if you’ve ever been in a room with a really good cold caller) is that worrying about scripts and stressing over shoe-horning every bullet point into a call really isn’t the right thing to focus on. How you talk is the winner.

If you can sound human, non-salesy, solid, confident and, well… dare I say almost nonchalant about your call, prospects don’t immediately go into shut down mode.

When you get that sales call that says “this isn’t a sales call”, your brain goes “IT’S A SALES CALL!” and immediately shuts down.

When someone calls on behalf of a company you’ve never heard of and just wants to ask you three questions about your current life insurance, your brain goes “IT’S A SALES CALL!” and immediately shuts down.

If you can call a stranger and sound like a normal person genuinely just wondering if you might do some good work together (and know how to smartly parry a few incoming objections) you’re going to ride that 76% all the way to the bank (or at least to a call that lasts more than 12 seconds)

BTW, if you want to remember this rule to amaze and entertain others, I can heartily recommend singing a way less pleasant version of Tom Robinson Band’s 2-4-6-8 Motorway using “7-38-55”. It totally doesn’t work, but is a lot of fun (depending on how much fun the rest of your life is comparatively-speaking).

Don't wait for a New Business need

As you might imagine, being specialist at cold outreach and new business, we do quite a lot of it for ourselves. We like to think we’re pretty good at handling objections (we should be - it’s pretty much all we do day in, day out!)

One of the most common objections we bump into when prospecting for ourselves is “we don’t need any new business right now. When we need some new clients we’ll start thinking about doing some.”

Makes sense I guess.

However, new business is cold. Very cold. You might occasionally get very lucky and bump into a prospect that turns into some new business relatively quickly, but most of the time it takes months to nurture new contacts and turn an introduction into an actual order.

So if you wait until you NEED new business, you’re then guaranteed (pretty much) a fair wait. That’s the nature of the beast. You’ve got to build your prospect database, decide which avenues you’re going to head down (i.e. email campaigns, LinkedIn reach, networking situations, etc.) and then find the motivation to dive into a cold channel onslaught.

That’s not the kind of thing to do when you NEED it. How about you consider it a constant part of your growth instead? Don’t wait until you need replacement customers, get that slow ball rolling now.

I know I’m making it sounds dreadful but you HAVE to take new business seriously and recognise the challenges it presents if you want growth. You might be awesome and the phone never stops ringing, but that’s not a plan, that’s a prayer.

Take control of New Business while there’s no pressure to succeed. We’ve had calls from previous “no thanks” prospects who tell us “we’ve just lost our biggest client with no warning and need to replace them pronto”. That’s not a healthy cloud to be rolling out a cold campaign under.

Pressure DOES NOT make new business more successful. You don’t wait until you fancy a glass of red wine and THEN plant some grapes. You need to know you’ll need that future result and get in front of it.

I hope that makes sense.

And I now really fancy some red wine. Damn.

In-house vs out-sourced

Companies hate hiring agencies, and I totally get it. You’ve got to hear all their dullard pitches, then you have to onboard the lucky winner, then you have to pay them, and then you IMMEDIATELY don’t trust them at all because… well, they’re an external agency, ergo CHARLATANS laughing as they cash in your cheques and drink champagne on the back of your hard work. Probably.

So wouldn’t it be better to get someone in-house? Your own secret weapon that squirrels away in the cold corner of the office, delving into his/her/they/them little black book and introducing you to companies you only ever dreamt of being told “go away” by previously?

Well yes. And no. But mostly “no”.

Obviously I’m likely to say that because I want you to chose us as your new business agency, but I also have some quite compelling arguments to support that entirely biased point of view.

1) Oh, so you WANT to be a Sales Manager?

Yes, now you have to manage this person (assuming you want to keep an eye on what they’re up to. Oh, did I not mention that you’ll also immediately not trust them either? Totally. You’re going to need to put some KPIs in place, set some activity targets, appraise them, etc etc. I’m not saying an agency doesn’t take some management, but the whole point of hiring an agency is that they are already an operation with managers, systems, databases, reporting structures, etc. However, once Johnny or Jane is set up, who’s to say if that ‘networking meeting’ isn’t them taking their best mates to Yauatcha for a blow out?

You thought you’d be that cool guy that lets them get on with their job, but once three months has gone by with nary but a handful of people who want you to ‘keep in touch’ I guarantee you’ll be squinting at them through the crack in the adjoining door if they spend more than three minutes NOT on the phone.

2) I can’t keep writing.

This blog has gone on too long and I’ve already made an excellent point. Perhaps I’ll complete it in a different post.

Anyway. Hire us. THE END.

Don't expect New Business to sweep the leg

In the CLASSIC movie, Karate Kid, Mr Miyagi gets Daniel-san to clean his cars under the pretense of teaching him karate (by the way, I’m talking here about the original film, not that horrible remake with Will Smith’s cocky kid where you want to punch and drown him after five minutes). The “you work, I teach” manoeuvre from Miyagi is a genius move in the history of child labour and one I wager we’ll not see the likes of again in our lifetime.

Anyway, after LIKE FOREVER Mr Miyagi finally reveals that the moves involved in cleaning the cars are (very loosely, let’s be honest) related to the karate moves that are going to enable him to put other children into hospital (GREAT life lessons like this are littered throughout the film).

I studied Wadō-ryū myself under the legendary sensei, Yoshitsugu Shinohara, and never once did he trick me into learning karate. He’d simply say, “when someone tries to punch you in the face, move your arm up to block it”. In retrospect I feel somewhat cheated that he didn’t instead have me installing blinds in his kitchenette. Anyway, he’s dead now, so… lesson learned.

Still here? Wow. Thanks.

So, what you’ve ‘probably’ guessed from all this is… when bringing in a team of experts such as Sponge NB to do your new business, don’t expect to just be told “if you do {THING} you will immediately get {RESULT}”. It’s not that we’re going to have you cleaning our cars or anything (probably) it’s just that - like Mr Miyagi - we believe that a longer process without pressure actually leads to better, stronger and more sustainable outcomes.

Now we could simply tell you to block the punch on Monday and then enter you into the All Valley Karate Championship Tournament on Tuesday, but - frankly - you will end up in hospital with at least a punctured spleen. Being told the basic premise of a process isn’t the same as understanding it, working on it and benefiting from it.

We’d rather have you cleaning cars (again - for clarity - this IS a metaphor) for a while (and in real terms that might mean creating bespoke creds, compiling a solid database, practicing pitches, etc) before punching you in the face (again METAPHOR).

Look, we’ve all had a lot of fun with this blog, but in a word: New Business.

(Sayonara).

Keep your claims believable

Everyone exaggerates (as an award-winning, 6” 5’ muscular gold medallist with perfect teeth, I understand).

I also appreciate that no one ever misses a chance to take credit for something not necessarily down to them. I was once a celebrated PR in the video games industry. I even held some records for the most magazine covers ever for the games I looked after. These were, however, some brilliant games (Unreal, Duke Nukem, Driver… etc.). So, while I like to think I did a great job, it was kinda hard to fail with a roster of games the world was gagging for.

I personally take more pride in the really crap games that I got ANY PR traction for - they were the ones where I actually did something impressive. But if I was going to sell myself to you as a PR expert, which would I mention? Yes - the sexy stuff, of course.

However, when you present your ‘sexy stuff’, don’t push things too far. I will believe that your Twitter campaign helped push a brand deeper into consumers’ minds, but telling me the company saw a 400% increase in sales ‘because’ of your Twitter campaign… hmmm… well you just went from being a credible part of the story to sounding like a BS artist (and once I stop trusting what you say, even the honest stuff will fall of deaf ears).

Remember that the people you’re telling your stories too will know what they might expect from your part in the campaign. Whether you’re creating a logo, running social media or media buying, you will have a positive impact on the outcomes, but it won’t all be down to you.

Be humble and believable and i’ll both credit you for the work and credit you for being smart enough to be reasonable and honest.

New business and social media

Following 678 - Followers 8

It’s my strong belief that anything you do when it comes to self-promotion should directly be linked to winning new business. Social media has become a quick and easy way to share results, key announcement and the work you actually produce. It can, however, also become an albatross around your neck (or at least several pigeons if you don’t have albatross in your region).

One quick exercise… take a look at your followers on any given social platform that you actively spend time posting on. How many of those might one day become customers, and how many are simply other agencies that want to keep an eye on you (or followed you back because you followed them)?

I imagine the ratio is pretty heavily weighted towards peers rather than future customers (let’s be honest, what are the chances BA’s Marketing Director follows loads of design agencies on Instagram?)

So, the larger question is, why are you spending all this time showing off to your competitors? Is it to prove you’re better than them? Is it to gather those eight ‘likes’ from chums in the industry who appear to spend their lives looking for things to like?

If you put all your time posting on social media down as building “good brand awareness” you’re simply trying to justify a massive waste of time in your day. The time you’ve spent showing off on social media could have been spent reaching out to potential customers.

Stop trying to make people who will never employ you think “oooh, how clever”.

Every time you get the urge to prove how clever you are, instead impress me by writing a great email to a potential client. You might not get any ‘likes’ that day but you might make a new connection and win some business.

New business: impressive versus realistic

Before I was involved with Sponge New Business, I didn’t even know the new business sector existed. I’d sit in my office being pestered by various agencies (I was a senior marketing decision-maker), never for once thinking it wasn’t the actual staff themselves getting in touch. This is either a testament to the job being done by those reaching out to me, or a testament to how stupid I am. Take your pick.

Once I was aware and involved in the sector I started researching the different business development companies to see how their offerings varied. Though it’s a fairly busy sector, it seemed the companies I encountered were easily pigeonholed into two boxes: they were either focused on delivering the lean, tough scraps achievable in this sector, or they lied through their teeth about the HUNDREDS of opportunities they were going to bring to the table just to win the business.

When pitching to new potential clients it seems we have two options: we can either tell them what they’d love to hear, or tell them the truth.

When I was in PR, people would ask for guaranteed coverage from our activities. I’d tell them “You’re thinking of advertising; that’s not how PR works”.

Similarly, if you’re shopping for new business agencies and REALLY like the sound of their proposal, you’re probably on the cusp of disappointment.

#fearpromises

The promise(s) of New Business

A recent Semrush study (“How Companies Look for Marketing Agencies”) spat out some great facts and figures for me to base blog entries on.

One of my favourite parts of this report was a “Top Ten” of the biggest red flags that turn businesses off and affect an agency’s chance of success. There are some obvious candidates in the mix (poor communication, lack of expertise, etc.) but in at number three is “overpromising results”.

This is an incredibly hard one to get right and we’ve fallen foul of it ourselves many many times - not so much in the delivery stage, but in the pitch stage.

It’s a moral dilemma as much as anything: do I lie to you now to win the business (but have to face you when the exaggerated results never appear) or do I tell the truth from the start, setting things up realistically but risking not being hired to begin with?

We’ve always chosen to be honest from the very start but (I won’t lie) I’ve often wondered if we’d win more business if we just promised the moon to trick new clients onboard (I’m pretty sure others out there are doing that as standard).

The report isn’t necessarily geared towards a new business agency such as Sponge, but the dilemma remains none the less: how do you balance promising the kinds of results the client wants to hear versus the kind of results you believe are achievable?

The answer is… “I don’t know” (oh sorry - you thought I knew? Apologies!)

I would however suggest promising the kinds of results that are going to challenge your team. That way, even if you miss certain KPIs along the way, your client will - one would hope - certainly be able to see and appreciate the effort being put in.

Good luck. Oh and watch out for the minefield on your right.

Why Marketing Directors are always angry.

THE UNFAIR TRUTH:

If a product does well, it’s because of the Sales Director. If a product doesn’t do well, it’s because of the Marketing Director. The packaging was all wrong. The demographic was way off. We should have spent less on outdoor and more online. We should have spent less online and more outdoor. We should have gone with that bold font and not italicised. Etcetera.

THAT is why Marketing Directors are always angry.

That’s also why Marketing Directors get furious when marketing agencies pretend to operate in 'The Same Space’.

If you look at a senior Marketing Director’s LinkedIn page you’ll probably see a few ‘likes’ per week or month, the odd “well done team” post, and lots of recruitment stuff.

If you look at any marketing agency boss’ LinkedIn page you’ll see them variously sharing photos of the latest word they’ve been paid thousands to change the font of, or - if you’re really lucky - find some click-desperate imbecile doing push-ups, singing or recreating his favourite movie scenes in a galling attempt to get as many ‘likes’ and ‘love’ from similarly spare-time-rich agency owners.

To quote a colleague: LinkedIn has become an agency circle-jerk.

I was once told by a junior colleague that she never sent emails to marketing directors after 4:15pm on a Friday because “they’ve probably gone home”. I slapped her (I didn’t). If you think that the more senior you are, the more you can skive off and get away with doing nothing, you’re wrong.

The more senior you are, the longer the hours you work, the more conference calls with Australia or America you’re on (neither of which give a shit whether it’s 6am or 6pm for you) and the more pressure and responsibility falls on your shoulders as your knees buckle and the bags form under your eyes.

These days it’s way easier to take conference calls remotely, but back in the day you were trapped in your office, huddled around some primitive speaker phone, watching as the office emptied while you calculated just how late you’d be home for that revered lamb bhuna and two bottles of red.

When some 42-year old man-child with a backward baseball cap turns up at your office, flamboyantly parks his electric scooter and then moon-walks into your office to tell you why “Monttocks Script Font is going to be huge this year”, all you can think about is repeatedly punching his corpse while you take beasting from the Americans because THEY know how you SHOULD have launched that product in Italy last month (but, strangely, didn’t mention anything until it failed).

So, apart from the personal therapeutic value in venting my spleen, what’s the point of this?

The point - you ass clowns - is that if you want to appeal to the Marketing Directors you want to hire you, act like they do, not how your peers do. If creative agency #317 are doing ‘hilarious’ videos on LinkedIn and racking up tens of comments, take a look at how many ‘buyers’ are in that list of likes. Any Heads of Marketing in there? Any Marketing Directors looking for a new agency (and making the decision based on some middle-aged prat in an overly-patterned shirt juggling cabbages)? No. Don’t be fucking stupid. Professionals want to work with professionals. Otherwise they’d be teachers.

When you’re a proper Marketing Director your life mostly sucks. They try to compensate by paying you lots of money and letting you fly Premium Economy, but ultimately that’s not enough. Pity the Marketing Director, empathise with the Marketing Director and - for god’s sake - don’t breakdance during a pitch to a Marketing Director; we WILL kill you.

One final thought: “Monttocks”.

Care about what your customer cares about, not what you care about

Not the punchiest title ever, but it saves me writing a long blog.

IN A NUTSHELL: Never forget that when you launch you own company’s third ‘new’ rebranded website of the year… or unveil the new version of your logo (that took months but is effectively much the same)… etc etc. NONE of this matters to your customer, so don’t make a fuss about your own housekeeping. ALWAYS make a fuss of them.

Companies get bored and do things to feel like they are moving forward (we had a client who spent a month ‘refining’ an About Us page that almost no one will ever read!) Don’t try to ‘present’ these things to your clients. They mostly just want your best work at your best price in a timely fashion.

Focus on that and you’ll have the resources to rebrand yourself every month while the rest of the world gets on with some proper work.

Cold outreach - when when when

I was going to headline this blog with “quando quando quando” but realised it would ruin our SEO so thought better of it. None the less, a big question in new business is often “when?” and the answer is - always, and without exception - “now”.

If you’re thinking about initiating some cold outreach, do it “now”. If you’re wondering what month to schedule it into your 2022 plans, go for “now”. And if you’re looking back at 2021 wondering if you should have done some cold outreach, the answer is “now” (even though I appreciate it makes no sense in that context and “yes” would have worked much better).

The truth is, there’s no ‘perfect’ time to initiate cold outreach; you just have to do it.

Obviously summer holidays and key celebrations are quieter times, but you’ll always be able to find an excuse to NOT do some cold outreach, so just get on with it.

Success in new business comes from tenacity, having an organised approach, and putting in the time it takes (which is not inconsiderable). January too early? February still too early? March too near the end of the quarter? April too Eastery? May too late into Q2? June too near the end of Q2? etc.

See how easy it is to do nothing?

Seriously. There is no perfect time to start your cold outreach, but the worst time to not be doing some is right now. So stop reading this excellent blog and get some work done (the colder, the better),

Your job title says it all

I’m going to trust that you’re an intelligent person because you’ve chosen to read this excellent content. Because I trust you’re an intelligent person I almost don’t need to write the actual commentary for this blog. Let’s just say that it’s about stupid job titles people give themselves in the world of agencies. Here are some 100% genuine and real ones I’ve encountered of late. Take a look and then we’ll talk:

SEO Ninja, Magic Maker, Digital Overlord, Director of Storytelling, Social Media Ninja, Brand Strategy Guru, Web Alchemist, Wizard of Light Bulb Moments, Brand Warrior, Head of Chaos, Community Data Guerrilla, Idea Inventor, Social Media Rockstar, Online Community and Social Media Czar.

I could go on (and I’m sure you’ve encountered some real tools yourself) but let’s leave it at that ridiculous list.

I’ve had a number of job titles in my career, but all of them just described what I do.

Someone once referred to me as a “whizz kid”, someone else a “proper legend” (which was nice) but I’m not going to adopt any of those as my actual job title because it’s stupid. There are no ninjas in social media. To manipulate social media to its maximum potential you need to analyse the data, track trends, deploy smart, targeted content... etc. There’s nothing ‘ninja’ about it.

I’m only just starting to accept the word “ideation” (such is my distain for BS) but calling yourself a “Wizard of Light Bulb Moments” just ensures I refuse to connect with you on LinkedIn and will definitely never work with you because I’d be too embarrassed to introduce you to my colleagues.

Stop trying to impress me with your ‘creative’ job title; impress me instead with your business acumen (I’m pretty sure I’ll come up with my own nicknames for you as we go).

Awards and New Business

And the 'Meh' award goes to...

Yes, it’s time to dust off your tuxedo (along with my cynicism) because award season is upon us. Worried about the cost of hiring a new business agency? Why not blow it all on the pursuit of meaningless awards instead! All you have to lose are the entry fees, all the time you’ll waste filling in forms and submitting material, and the cost of a prestige table on awards night (why not sponsor the coat room too!)

But just think of the gains: You might be one a scant 100 or so companies that night (that week) that get to put an award logo on their site that 1) is lost in the sea of other meaningless awards on EVERYONE’S sites already, and 2) brings in no additional business because NO ONE chooses an agency because it’s won an award (primarily because there are apparently no non-award winning agencies out there anyway).

ANY NEW BUSINESS?

I will vaguely tip my hat towards the value of being yet another award-winning agency when it comes to attracting staff. Ego is as ego does, and who doesn’t want to work for an award-winning company?

Whether you’re struggling to find a new business professional to look after your outgoing pursuits (there is a serious lack of them right now) or just want to attract fresh, hungry talent, perhaps the odd award logo does tip the scales for those envisioning themselves in one of those group “winners on a stage somewhere waving a plastic statue” photos.

I’ve asked before… what is it you do in your day that moves your company forward. If you can think of anything more valuable than filling in awards submissions and booking Travelodge rooms for the night after, do that instead.

Oh, and good luck (because we all know you’re still going to enter, don’t we).

The language of New Business

The language of New Business (a.k.a. the importance of manure)

When you’re about to hit ‘Publish’ on your latest website update, do me a favour - participate in a little role playing (before you reach for the PVC mask, let me explain…)

Imagine you’re a really stressed Marketing Director whose American counterpart is really pissing him off by putting the Q2 budgets under a biased magnifying lens. Can you do that for me?

Ok, great. Now imagine you’re about to receive the fifth email of the morning from a brand/digital/marketing/design agency, and try to imagine the voice he hears in his head as he reads about how you “really get under the skin of your customers” or “bring brands alive online”. What’s that you say? you “…move at pace, act with integrity and collaborate relentlessly”? Well that’s smashing.

You know how perky and impressive your statements all sounded when you read them out in your proud voice? It doesn’t sound the same at all when you simply don’t care does it? Instead it sounds like a dullard spewing tired clichés into a tin bucket.

Now that you know the recipient’s frame of mind, why not write the next email without trying to impress him. Instead, HELP him. Don’t tell him you’ve “built a frictionless design ops platform”, tell him (brace yourself) that you can help. Tell him how you’ve helped people just like him and are going to make his day better.

Don’t talk crap, just talk.